Subscription television providers (e.g., cable, satellite, and so on) occasionally have a need to send a notification to one or more of their customers. For example, a provider may wish to notify subscribers when their bill is due or delinquent. Other types of notifications may include a notification that a particular channel is offering a free preview during a particular time period. Existing systems enable the transmission of notifications over a network to a client device. When the client device receives the notification, the notification is typically stored, and can by accessed by the viewer through a menu system. Other systems display notifications on the screen as soon as they are received.
Both of these scenarios present problems, however. In the first, a viewer must actively navigate a menu system to locate and view notifications that have been received. With this sort of an implementation, there is no real motivation for the viewer to look at the notifications, and therefore, the viewer may never see the notification that indicates that his cable bill is past due. In the second scenario, there is no guarantee that a viewer will see the notification that is received and immediately displayed. For example, if the television is powered off when a notification is received, or if the television is on, but no one is watching it when the notification is received, then the notification will not be seen by a viewer. To alleviate that problem, such notifications may be configured to persist indefinitely until dismissed by a viewer. This ensures that a viewer sees the notifications, but can cause other problems. For example, if a viewer is recording a particular program when a notification is received, if the notification is configured to persist indefinitely, the notification will obscure the program that is being recorded.
Accordingly, a need exists for a technique for presenting a notification that better insures that the notification is observed by a television viewer.